51/140

This wooden oven peel came from Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. It was used for lifting bread and other foodstuffs in and out of a baker’s oven.
This oven peel, made entirely from wood, came from Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. The shovel is flat with sides which taper towards the handle. It was used for lifting bread and other foodstuffs in and out of a baker’s oven.

1 oven peel: wood; good condition

Citation in publication [H. J. Massingham, 'Country Relics' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939)] –'I have for instance, a fine all-wood bread-peel, a Romance word (see Gertrude Jekyll, 'Old West Surrey') from the Latin 'pala' and not, as it appears, a Saxon word. It is over 7 ft. long, with the wedge-shaped and flattened shovel sharply tapered on both sides and fitted tightly without rivet or tie into a tongued extension of the long handle. A woodcut from a manuscript in the Bodleian shows the bread-peel of the Middle Ages taking out the loaves, smoking-hot, from the oven. The only difference between it and mine is that the shovel of the former is round. It was also used for depositing the dough into the bread-oven on one side of the fireplace, and this oven projected externally in a crescent round the wall and was roofed with tiles, stone-slats or even thatch.' (p.204), MERL list / description [Massingham Collection, October 1989] – 'ACC. NO.: 51/140 // NAME: OVEN PEEL // NEG NO.: 35/194, 35/198 // STORAGE: ', part of H. J. Massingham collection